So now we finally know where Saddam has been spending his spare time these last few months, down a "spider hole" nursing his last 3/4 of a million dollars! One can't help thinking that he might have been better off legging it to somewhere less uncomfortable and investing his ill gotten gains on pork belly futures!

And now of course there will be an unseemly media scrum and increasing pressure on the US Government and military either to hand him over to the Iraqis for immediate lynching, or protests not to do so, since it would certainly mean his rapid execution with a minimum of legal fees. The USA certainly will not hand him over to the International Court in the Hague, because of course that court does not hand out capital sentences, so they will either have to organise their own, or pretend that he could get a fair trial from his fellow Iraqis.

It is an interesting question as to exactly what charges could be brought against him that could result in a conviction. As a Head of State, he could claim, quite reasonably, that any measures he took were within his right to defend his country. Heads of State are generally accepted to be immune to prosecution as a result of the criminal actions of their subordinates, however despicable. Nuremberg remember convicted the senior Nazis individually on the basis of proven individual acts and involvement in war crimes. Saddam could claim that he was democratically elected (well at least there were elections of a sort). And it is well worth remembering that we went to war against a nation, viz Iraq, not against a person, ie Saddam Hussein. Equally there is a substantial body of opinion that says that doing so (however justified) was in itself illegal.

So there is quite probably a dilemma. If Saddam is given 'justice', and not to do so brings into serious doubt whether any future Iraqi government could be regarded as based on the rule of law, not the mob, then he must be given a fair trial, but a fair trial must be seen to be fair, and could it ever be so if conducted by the Iraqis themselves? A similar dilemma applies if he is tried by an American court, however constituted. We can see from the Guantanamo situation that those held there have not yet been tried before even the military tribunals proposed, the obvious implication being that such tribunals would not provide a fair trial, especially if the tribunal's decisions resulted in a capital sentence.

So its my humble prediction that Saddam will be able to plea bargain his way out of his present situation and will finish up retiring disgracefully to spend his declining years with Mrs Saddam on some beach somewhere. I hope I am wrong, but it is obvious that he is going to provide a lot more problems alive, than if he had resisted and received a grenade down his spider hole. The guy is a survivor, and given half a chance he'll survive for long enough to see Iraq dissolve into the inevitable anarchy and civil war that will follow when the USA and UK forces quit the country. A cynic (myself of of course not included) might conclude that the worst punishment for Saddam would be to give him his country back.

I could add of course, that Saddam is probably the only person who knows what happened to the infamous 'weapons of mass destruction'. He is unlikely to tell us much about them if he's dangling from some lampost is he? And what happens if he goes on trial just as the American Presidential elections get under way?

The trouble with monsters is that they have a nasty habit of producing nightmares.